Climate Change

I start this blog on climate politics as tropical superstorm Sandy expends its fury on the eastern coast of the US. The satellite imagery shows the movement of the gathering storm as it builds and breaks over land, bringing with it massive destruction and massive upheaval in the wealthiest and most powerful nation of the world.

Two days into the ongoing negotiations at Bonn and the all too familiar rifts are visible. The primary disagreement is over how to move forward—whether to begin discussions from what was agreed to in the meeting of the Conference of Parties (CoP) in Bali in 2007 or the Durban CoP in 2011.

The European Union (EU) recently issued a warning to two airlines from India and eight airlines from China for not providing their 2011 baseline emission data to it. The EU expected them to provide this data to set a benchmark for emissions from the aviation sector under its emissions trading scheme, commonly called the EU ETS.

Just ahead of the mid-year climate change session at Bonn, starting on May 14, the least developed countries (LDCs) have issued a call for efforts to be directed towards raising ambition on mitigation for the pre-2020 period, calling it the sine qua non of a successful outcome on the new Durban Platform negotiations.

The upcoming climate change inter-sessional at Bonn will take place from May 14-25. Following the decisions agreed to at CoP-17 in Durban, one more track, Ad hoc working group on the Durban Platform for enhanced action (ADP) will be added to the four existing tracks – Ad hoc working groups on Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and Long-term cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) and the subsidiary bodies (SBSTA, SBI). Under this new track, deliberations for the work plan on a future protocol post-2020 and the means to increase ambition will be carried out.